Topical Issue on Personal Narrative Online

The linguistic interest in personal narrative has received a boost with the spread of computer-mediated communication. Social media in particular have been cited as primary sites for the narrative construction of self that opens new possibilities for creative and selective self-presentation through stories of personal experience. This special issue aims to bring together contributions on linguistic structures of an internet narrative. In analysing the formal level of the narrative online, two competing approaches are currently favoured by researchers: Labov and Waletzky’s (1967) elements of the narrative, and Ochs and Capps’ (2001) dynamic model of narrative dimensions (including the ‘small stories’ approach [Georgakopoulou 2007] that has grown to be extremely influential in the study of internet communication). The two frameworks are typically seen as incompatible and based on fundamentally different theoretical assumptions. By inviting the contributions from scholars who work in different theoretical strands, we aim to achieve a synthesis of findings across linguistic fields. Our goal is to illustrate the variety of possible interpretive lenses through which narrative can be viewed, to advocate interdisciplinarity, and to provide a comprehensive view of personal storytelling online within different, but complementary, research frames. The special issue is prefaced by a short introduction by the editors.